Originally published in the Summer/Fall 2025 edition of the Virginia Defender, issue 77, printed December 11. Reproduced here for accessibility and archival purposes. To find other stories in the Summer/Fall 2025 issue or to download the full PDF, see this post. For other issues dating back to 2012, see the Full Issues page.

Phil Wilayto, editor of The Virginia Defender and Coordinator of the anti- fascist Odessa Solidarity Campaign, was asked by a reporter for the Russian news agencies Sputnik and RIA Novosti to comment on the peace plan being proposed by the Trump administration to end the war between Russia and Ukraine. These are the comments that were submitted.

As of the beginning of December, the Trump administration says it is “fine tuning” a peace plan to end the fighting in Ukraine. Ukraine and its European allies oppose the plan, saying it favors Russia.

It is important to understand that the current war didn’t start in 2022 with Russia’s intervention in Ukraine. Instead, it began in 2014, after the February coup that overthrew an elected president and replaced him with an unelected right-winger who relied on paramilitary fascist organizations to stay in power.

That spring, the people of Donetsk and Luhansk in the Donbass region of Ukraine, many of whom remembered the fascist occupation of their country in World War II, declared their independence and formed “people’s republics.”

The new Ukrainian government responded by opening a military offensive to retake the Donbass, using the paramilitary organizations as its shock troops. This was the beginning of the war.

It wasn’t until 2022 – eight years later- that the Russian Federation incorporated the breakaway republics.

In the meantime, it had become clear that the U.S-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO, was using the war to try and weaken and destabilize Russia. These powers wanted to pull Ukraine intothe European orbit, bring it into NATO andso complete the Western encirclement ofRussia, whose massive natural resourcesare coveted by the U.S. and the other NATOcountries.

In our view, a real peace plan would include the following points:

A recognition that the war in Ukrainewas the result of the mounting U.S./NATOpressure on Russia, plus the 2014 right-wing coup, plus Kiev’s attacks on the independent, anti-fascist Donbass republics.

A pledge by Ukraine that it will not seek to join NATO.

A recognition that Crimea, which until 1954 had long been part of Russia, has legitimately returned to Russia as a result of a referendum held right after the 2014 coup; and that the Donbass region, whose people have courageously fought back against the Ukraine offensive, is now legitimately part of the Russian Federation.

A pledge by Russia that it will seek no more Ukrainian land, a pledge that would be backed up by a regional security pact to ensure peace between Ukraine and Russia.

An international agreement that the Ukrainian government must be held accountable for the political repression that it and its paramilitary supporters have carried out against those in Ukraine who objected to the 2014 coup.

And this accountability must include the massacre of more than 40 people who were murdered on May 2, 2014, when a fascist-led mob set fire to the House of Trade Unions in Odessa.